Forced labor in Germany during World War II: Map

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Use of forced labour in
Nazi Germany during World War II occurred on a large
scale. It was an important part of the German
economic exploitation of conquered territories; it also
contributed to the extermination of populations of German–occupied Europe. The
Germans abducted about 12 million people from almost twenty
European countries; about two thirds of whom came from Eastern Europe. Many workers died as a result
of their living conditions, mistreatment or were civilian
casualties of the war. They received little or no compensation
during or after the war.

Forced workers

Hitler's policy of Lebensraum strongly emphasized the conquest of
new lands in the East, known as Generalplan Ost, and the exploitation of
these lands to provide cheap goods and labour to Germany. Even
before the war, Nazi Germany maintained
a supply of slave labour. This practice
started from the early days of labour
camps of "undesirables" ( ), such as the homeless, homosexual,
criminals, political dissidents, communists, Jews, and anyone
whom the regime wanted out of the way. During World War II the Nazis
operated several categories of Arbeitslager (labour camps) for different
categories of inmates. Prisoners in Nazi labour camps were worked
to death on short rations and in bad conditions, or killed if they
became unable to work. Many died as a direct result of forced
labour under the Nazis.

"Obligations of a worker during his or her stay in Germany" (in
German and Polish)

The largest number of labour camps held civilians forcibly abducted
in the occupied countries (see Łapanka)
to provide labour in the German war industry, repair bombed
railroads and bridges or work on farms. As the war progressed, the
use of slave labour experienced massive growth. Prisoners of war and civilian "undesirables"
were brought in from occupied territories. Millions of Jews,
Slavs and other conquered peoples
were used as slave labourers by German corporations such as
Thyssen, Krupp,
IG Farben and even Fordwerke - a subsidiary of the Ford Motor Company. About 12 million
forced labourers, most of whom were Eastern Europeans, were employed in the
German war economy inside Nazi Germany throughout the war. More
than 2000 German companies profited from slave labour during the
Nazi era, including Deutsche Bank and
Siemens.

A class system was created amongst Fremdarbeiter (foreign
workers) brought to Germany to work for the Reich. The system was
based on layers of increasingly less privileged workers, starting
with well paid workers from Germany's allies or neutral countries
to slave labourers from conquered untermensch (Nazi German term for what they
saw as subhuman) populations.

Gastarbeitnehmer (guest
workers) - Workers from Germanic, Scandinavian countries, Italy
or other German allies (Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary). This was a
very small group, only about 1% of foreign workers in Germany came
from countries that were neutral or allied to Germany.

Zwangsarbeiter (forced workers)

Militärinternierte (military
internees) For example, almost all Polish non-officer prisoners
of war (c. 300,000) were forced to work in Germany. In 1944 there
were almost two million prisoners of war employed as forced
labourers in Germany.

Zivilarbeiter (civilian
workers). Primarily Polish prisoners from the "General Government. They were regulated
by strict Polish decrees: they
received lower wages and could not use public conveniences (such as
public transport) or visit many public spaces and businesses (for
example they could not attend a German church service, swimming
pools or restaurant); they had to work longer hours than Germans;
they received smaller food rations; they were subject to a curfew; they often were denied holidays and had to
work seven days a week; could not enter a marriage without
permission; possession of money or objects of value, bicycles,
cameras or lighters was forbidden; and they were required to wear a
sign - the "Polish P" - attached to their clothing. In 1939 there
were about 300,000 of them in Germany; In 1944 there were about
2,8 m Polish Zivilarbeiter in Germany (approximately
10% of Generalgouvernement workforce) and a similar number of
workers in this category from other countries.

Ostarbeiter (Eastern
workers) Soviet civil workers primarily from Ukraine. They were
marked with a sign OST ("East"), had to live in camps that were
fenced with barbed wire and under guard, and were particularly
exposed to the arbitrariness of the Gestapo and the industrial
plant guards. Estimates put the number of OST Arbeiters between
3 million and 5.5 million.

In general, foreign labourers from Western Europe had similar gross
earnings and were subject to similar taxation as German workers. In
contrast, the central and eastern European forced labourers
received at most about one-half the gross earnings paid to German
workers and much fewer social benefits. Forced labourers who were
prisoners of labour or concentration camps received little if any
wage and benefits. The deficiency in net earnings of central and
eastern European forced labourers (versus forced labourers from
western countries) is illustrated by the wage savings forced
labourers were able to transfer to their families at home or abroad
(see table).

The official German records for the late summer of 1944 listed
7.6 million foreign civilian workers and prisoners of war in the territory of the
"Greater German Reich", who for the most part had been brought
there for employment by force. By 1944, slave labour made up one
quarter of Germany's entire work force, and the majority of German
factories had a contingent of prisoners. The Nazis also had plans
for the deportation and enslavement of Britain's adult male
population in the event of a successful invasion.

A pre-war period from 1933–1938 during which the predecessor of
Organisation Todt, the office of General Inspector of German
Roadways (Generalinspektor für das deutsche Straßenwesen),
was primarily responsibility for the construction of the German
Autobahn network. The organisation
was able to draw on "conscripted" - i.e., compulsory - labour, from
within Germany, through the Reich Labour Service (Reichsarbeitsdienst, RAD).

The period from 1938, when the Organisation Todt proper was
founded until 1942, when the huge increase in the demand for labour
created by the various military and paramilitary projects was met
by a series of expansions of the laws on compulsory service, which
ultimately obligated all Germans to arbitrarily determined (i.e.
effectively unlimited) compulsory labour for the state:
Zwangsarbeit. From 1938-40, Over 1.75 million Germans were
conscripted into labour service. From 1940-42, Organization Todt
began its reliance on Gastarbeitnehmer (guest workers), Militärinternierte (military internees), Zivilarbeiter (civilian workers), Ostarbeiter (Eastern workers) and Hilfswillige ("volunteer")
POW workers.

The period from 1942 until the end of the war, with
approximately 1.4 million labourers in the service of the
Organisation Todt. Overall, 1% were Germans rejected from military
service and 1.5% were concentration camp prisoners; the rest were
prisoners of war and compulsory labourers from occupied countries.
All were effectively treated as slaves and existed in the complete
and arbitrary service of a ruthless totalitarian state. Many did
not survive the work or the war.

Extreme cases: extermination through labour

Millions of Jews were forced labourers in ghettos, before they were shipped off to extermination camps. The Nazis also
operated concentration
camps, some of which provided free forced labour for industrial
and other jobs while others existed purely for the extermination of their inmates.
Ironically, at the entrances to a number of camps a German phrase meaning "work brings freedom"
(Arbeit macht frei) was placed.
A notable
example of labour-concentration camp is the Mittelbau-Dora labour camp complex that serviced the production of
the V-2 rocket.Extermination through labour
was a Nazi German World War II
principle that regulated the aims and purposes of most of their
labour and concentration camps. The rule
demanded that the inmates of German WWII camps be forced to work
for the German war industry with only basic tools and minimal food
rations until totally exhausted.

Controversy over compensation

To facilitate the rebuilding of German economy after the war,
certain groups of Nazi victims were excluded from direct
compensation through the German Government; those were the groups
with the least amount of political pressure they could have brought
to bear, and many forced labourers from the Eastern Europe fall
into that category. Since the end of the war, there has been little
initiative on the part of the German government or German industry
to compensate the forced labourers under the Third Reich.

As stated in the London Debt Agreement of 1953:

Consideration of claims arising out of the Second World War by
countries which were at war with or were occupied by Germany during
that war, and by nationals of such countries, against the Reich and
agencies of the Reich, including costs of German occupation,
credits acquired during occupation on clearing accounts and claims
against the Reichskreditkassen shall be deferred until the final
settlement of the problem of reparations.

To this date, there are arguments that such settlement has never
been fully completed and that Germany post-war development has been
greatly aided, while the development of victim countries
stalled.

A prominent example of a group which received almost no
compensation for their time as forced labourer in Nazi Germany are
the Polish forced labourers. According to the Potsdam Agreements of 1945, the Poles
were to receive reparations not from
Germany itself, but from the Soviet Union share of those repatriations; due to the Soviet
pressure on the Polish communist government, the Poles agreed to a
system of repayment that de facto meant that few Polish
victims received any sort of adequate compensation (comparable to
the victims in Western Europe or Soviet Union itself). Most
of the Polish share of repatriations was "given" to Poland by
Soviet Union under the Comecon framework,
which was not only highly inefficient, but benefited Soviet Union
much more than Poland. Under further Soviet pressure (related to
the London
Agreement on German External Debts), in 1953 the People's Republic of Poland
announced its waiver of further claims of reparations from the
successor states of the German Reich. Only after the fall of communism in Poland in 1989/1990
did the Polish government try to renegotiate the issue of
repatriations, but found little support in this from the German
side and none from the Soviet (later, Russian) side.

The total number of forced labourers under the Third Reich who were
still alive as of August 1999 was 2.3 million. The German Forced Labour
Compensation Programme was established in 2000; a forced labour
fund paid out more than 4.37 billion euros to close to
1.7 million of then-living victims around the world (one-off
payments of between 2,500 to 7,500 euros).
Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel
stated in 2007 that "Many former forced labourers have finally
received the promised humanitarian aid"; she also conceded that
before the fund was established nothing had gone directly to the
forced labourers. German president Horst
Koehler stated

It was an initiative that was urgently needed along the journey
to peace and reconciliation... At least, with these symbolic
payments, the suffering of the victims has been publicly
acknowledged after decades of being forgotten.

See also

Baudienst, German (In English,
building service or construction service); full name - Polnischer
Baudienst im Generalgouvernement, German (In English, Polish
Service of Construction in the General Government)

Notes

a. By January 1944, Italy has switched sides and
is included in Occupied Western Europe. Bulgaria, Hungary and
Romania would not switch sides till summer 1944 and are included in
German allies section.

References

Further reading

German historian who has conducted a lot of research into the
issue of Nazi forced labour.